Essay 4

               The reason that I chose this photo was because the colors and the lighting allowed it to have a lot of potential as far as editing goes. 

               The first step I always take when editing photos is to change to levels. This helps to bring about clarity in the colors. It makes the lights appear more light and then darks appear more dark. This photo was taken in the evening so the background has the black of the sky. The flash was also on so the foreground is artificially lit up but does allow for the colors to be extra bright. When I adjusted the levels, the darkness became more frame-like and the highlights of the skin became more apparent. 

               The next manipulation that I made was to increase the contrast. This is a linear transfer function and therefore the central portion of the transfer curve is linear and has a slope greater than 1.0. Upping the contrast tends to create a crisper look to the photograph and makes the colors appear more warm and aesthetically pleasing. 

               After changing the contrast, I added noise. At the point that I decided to add noise, I had an over exaggerated image in mind that I wanted to end with. Adding the noise helped to break up the colored pixels and add some abstractness to the photo. I used a low amount of noise so that for the most part, the foreground and background and all the detail for the most part are still very distinguishable. 

               The final effect that I performed was to add a stained glass filter. This is an extremely exaggerated filter and it gave the photo the near undistinguishable appearance that I wanted. I purposely selected the smaller tile option size so that the entire finished photo was not just a cluster of color and there were still some shapes visible. 

               Overall, I feel that these effects and filters created a very interesting final image. Because it is not perfectly crisp, the viewer continues to look at it in order to translate it into a viewable image.